The saying goes that people don’t leave a company — they leave a boss. And the following story is a perfect explanation of why it’s so popular.
Recently, content creator Mary E Frost released a TikTok video talking about Boomers in managerial positions who appear to be out of touch with the current job market.
It immediately started gaining attention on the platform and was eventually stitched by business and finance expert Chris Gerbig, who described his own experience of entering the workforce 14 years ago and said he faced the same problem back then, too.
This raises all sorts of questions about the generational gap between employers and employees.
Image credits: chris_gerbig
This woman called out boomer bosses for not following the job market closely enough
“Your whole generation is so out of touch with what the going rate for everything is. How much are you paying these people? You’re just like, ‘Well, I start them out at 12 an hour,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, like $12 an hour is what I got paid as a lifeguard in high school in like 2001.'”
Image credits: chris_gerbig
Then, business and finance expert Chris Gerbig joined the discussion, sharing his own personal experience
“My first job when I graduated college with a finance degree, was a bank teller making $9. My take-home pay every two weeks after taxes and health insurance was less than $600. So I was bringing home $1,200 a month as a grown man with a college degree working full time in America. My boss was a boomer, she was probably 55 at the time, and this was 14 years ago. We’re sitting around one day talking in the lunchroom, and she says one of the employees is getting married and we should chip in for a present. She wanted all of us to chip in $30. I told her, ‘Sorry, I can’t do that. I can’t afford it.’ And she looked at me like she was blown away by my comment. She said, ‘How can you not afford $30?'”
Image credits: chris_gerbig
He broke down the numbers
“And I said, ‘Because I’m working full time at this bank and I’m making $18,000 a year.’ And she just kind of shrugged. But that $1,200 a month I was making had to pay for an apartment, car payment, student loan payments because I’d just graduated, health insurance… Gas at the time was $4 a gallon. This was 2008. I lived in Goodlettsville. And the bank I worked at was Bank of America in Bellamy. So I was commuting at least 20 miles each way and paying for $4-a-gallon gas. I had no money, I couldn’t afford this $30 wedding present”
Image credits: chris_gerbig
And the insulting “great news” his boss arrived with
“She comes to me a month later and says, ‘Chris, I have great news. Guess what? I’m giving you a raise.’ I get excited because I need a raise and I need more money. She says, ‘I bumped you up to $9.10 an hour.’ What? Yes, she found it in her heart to give me a 10-cent pay raise, which equated to about four bucks a week or $200 for the whole year. And the sad part was she had no idea how insulting that was.”
Image credits: chris_gerbig
Gerbig’s video has since gone viral
The points that he raised reflect a broader context
Leadership expert Rasmus Hougaard also believes that bosses need to change their management style for younger generations if they want to keep their future employees engaged.
“What we’re seeing these days is a whole new population is joining the workforce, … [and they] are asking for more than just a pay cheque and an annual grade,” he said.
To determine what makes a good leader and what current employees are looking for, Hougaard teamed up with fellow leadership expert Jacqueline Carter, and they interviewed 250 “C-suite” executives from Microsoft, Google, Lego, and other big companies, and assessed 35,000 leaders from around the world based on more than 1,000 studies.
Image credits: August de Richelieu (not the actual photo)
Turns out, the things Mary E Frost and Chris Gerbig talked about in their videos are universal. “[Younger employees] are looking for more sense of happiness, more sense of connectedness, a stronger sense of meaning and contributing something positive to the world,” Hougaard explained, adding that “the kind of leadership that’s required for that is the kind of leadership that’s more approachable, more direct, more personable.”
The researchers found that 77 percent of leaders thought they were doing a good job, but 88 percent of employees said their bosses didn’t engage enough.
So it’s probably not that millennials or Gen Z are entitled — it’s that they prioritize different things than the ones who came before them.
And inspired a heated discussion
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